Baseball Loses To Long Beach State, 8-5

Long Beach, Calif. -
The UC Santa Barbara baseball team failed to take advantage of scoring opportunities against 14th ranked Long Beach State, stranding 10 runners on base, and starter Matt Vasquez had his worst outing of the season, in the Gauchos 8-5 Big West Conference loss Friday night at Blair Field.

The Gauchos, who squandered numerous opportunities to score, fall to 15-20 overall, and 2-5 in Big West action.

Abe Alvarez (8-2) went six and two-thirds innings, giving up three runs, none earned, on five hits and striking out nine, to help the Dirtbags improve to 22-9 overall and 7-0 in the Big West. Neil Jamison pitched the final two innnings to pick up his second save of the season.

Vasquez lost his fourth consecutive decison, as two Long Beach home runs highlighted the seven runs they managed off the Gaucho ace. The sophomore from Santa Barbara lasted only four and two-thirds innings, giving up six hits while striking out one batter and now falls to 4-5 on the season.

Vasquez did not get the support he needed from the UCSB offense as they failed to take advantage of runners in scoring position.

In the eighth inning, the Gauchos failed to score a run after loading the bases with nobody out.

Ryan Spilborghs led the Gaucho offense, going 2-for-4 with two RBI. The junior from Santa Barbara hit his tenth home run of the year, on a two-run blast over the center field fence in the ninth inning.